Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads out there! I wonder what percent of you envision a perfect Father’s Day as opening a box of cards and going to a ball game? That would be right up my alley, but alas, I don’t have any cards to open and we went to a game last night. Speaking of which, I tried to blog using blogger mobile from the ballpark last night, but my post kept failing. The San Diego, or I guess it's now "Famous" Chicken was there and put on a great show. I also got to see Cardinal prospect and former Razorback Zack Cox play. BTW if anyone has one of his 2011 Bowman Autos, I'd be interested in trading for it.
I try to keep my personal life separate from this blog, but for the purpose of this post, I can let it leak in a little. Indulge me a minute on Father's Day while I tell you what kind of father I am. I have a little boy (5 years old), who I hope at some point, will share my love of baseball and baseball cards. But knowing him as I do, I understand that anything I try to push on him will be rejected without prejudice. And truthfully, should he decide that his interests lie elsewhere, as long as he participates and is interested in something other than splaying out on the couch with his Nintendo DS, I will be thrilled no matter what he does.
He doesn’t care too much for baseball cards right now, but neither did I at that age. He doesn’t want to watch baseball on TV either, unless he thinks he can con a later bed time out of it (which he can). He does, however, love going the Northwest Arkansas Naturals (Kansas City’s AA affiliate that is near my home) games. Actually what he enjoys is eating snow cones and ice cream, coloring at the picnic tables and plummeting down the huge inflatable slide again and again and again. The game itself is just background noise to him. Hey, fine with me as long as I get to go and watch at least some of it. We usually last 6 or 7 innings per game before he’s ready to go home. So there are some positive feelings toward baseball in that regard which gives me hope.
He also loves getting things in the mail, which I thought I could use to my advantage. So I decided one day last summer to write a letter to the Texas Rangers, and ask if they had any sort of kid’s pack, or freebies they could send my boy in the mail to spur his interest in baseball. I sent the letter off and imagined his excitement from getting a package from a Major League team. I also thought I should hedge my bets and send a similar letter to the Royals to increase his chances of getting something. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. So I sent more letters. To all 30 teams. Only a few weeks later, the floodgates opened. We started getting package after package from Major League teams. After about the 7th day in a row receiving packages, my son threw up his hands and yelled: “Why do I keep getting all this baseball stuff? I hate baseball!” Didn’t see that coming. I began putting his packages away in a box after that.
My wife has a nickname for me: “Too Far.” She breaks this out when I take my jokes, teases, requests, plans, suggestions, dinner orders and baseball card checklists “too far.” After my son’s rejection of his mail order bounty of baseball, my wife just looked at me and said, “Too Far.” I know she’s right. What’s sad is that I’m really tempted to send out the letters again this summer, completely ignoring the lesson I learned last summer.
Maybe someday he’ll take an interest in this stuff, and if he does it will be waiting for him. Until then, it’s blog fodder. Here is some of what he received:
This little box of goodies will be fun to go through again some day when he gets older. Or perhaps my daughter will get some enjoyment out of the stickers. All I know is: I can't wait to see what we get when I send the letters off again this year! Happy Father's Day!
2 comments:
Happy Fathers Day, bud! Hope you have a great day.
I've been trying to think of a way to get my kids interested in baseball cards. Haven't come up with anything yet, but i might give this a shot. Thanks for the idea.
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